


Of Man and Wolf

by SlipOfAScribe



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Gruesome Death, I'm a horrible person, Loss of Control, Not A Happy Ending, Sad Ending, The Hale Fire, depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:43:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5097839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlipOfAScribe/pseuds/SlipOfAScribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Hale had been different before the fire, he'd been more human. The fire ruined Peter Hale for everyone; the fire ruined everything for Peter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Man and Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NIXtheWADE](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NIXtheWADE/gifts).



> If fire and burning are triggers, seriously turn back now.   
> If you're looking for happiness in your life, turn back now.  
> #sorry #notsorry
> 
> My roommate, NixtheWade, was my beta and we were tossing up ideas for the title. We went with Of Man and Wolf obviously, but "Results came in, I'm a horrible person. They weren't even testing for that" was an option provided by him. So yeah, have...fun?

Peter was upstairs, in the attic, sifting through boxes when it happened. The music pouring from his headphones drowned out the initial sounds of attack. It was the smell of gasoline seeping through the air in the large Hale House that drew his attention first. His stomach curled and he froze. With perked ears, the first of the screams breached his music. Peter jerked the earbuds out and tossed the iPod amidst the boxes he’d been digging through.

His little girl was crying out for him. Peter had taken too long. The hunters had been too efficient. When he reached the first floor landing, hunters were fleeing from the house, cackling. He bared his teeth at them, driven by the cries of his daughter. He bounded down the stairs to the basement and his footsteps stuttered. The gameroom his brother-in-law had built was barred with heavy chains and they reeked as though they’d been soaked in wolfsbane. There were seven of them bolted into the wall on either side of the door. The screams were coming from inside and the heat was unbearable even from this side of the door.

Peter ran at the door, smashing against chains and ember-hot wood. The door buckled and splintered, the chains rattled and held, their bolts keeping them steady. He saw his family inside, huddled together at the windows, engulfed in gasoline fueled flames. The room was an inferno, with no safe place for them to stand. The hunters had doused the door was gas as well and the chains were starting to glow red as they heated up. Peter still reached through them, pressed his face to their hot coils, and strained his fingers towards his little girl. Maybe he could still save her. She was only human, only eight years old, and shouldn’t be included in this sick punishment. This was the little girl who cried when she accidentally stepped on a salamander, had stopped talking to Peter for three days when he explained what hamburger was, and built a lean-to rabbit coop for the bunnies that lived in the woods. His little girl wouldn’t harm a soul and now she was tucked under Talia’s arm, burning to death for sins not her own.

Somehow, through the pain and chaos, she saw him. She broke from the family, screaming, “Daddy help!” Peter threw his body against the chains again, fighting to get to her. Her little body collapsed feet from the door, blackened from the flames. Suddenly, all of the screaming stopped. The roar of the fire crackled in his ears and Peter pulled away, his face and body in pain he didn’t know yet how to register. The house was creaking as the fire spread upwards and some natural instinct for survival drove him from the charred remains. He left his family behind.

 

 

Peter retreated into himself the moment he stepped away from the house. His wolf tried to heal but the wolfsbane that had soaked into his system from the chains kept him burned and scarred. When the cops, firetrucks, and ambulances showed up, Peter was taken away, but his mind was already so far from this place. He didn’t remember a moment of it.

It took a week of surgery, three weeks of rest and healing, and a day off of support for Peter to show any signs of recognition. A couple of nurses sat him up in a wheelchair to have him in a different position and avoid bedsores when he reached out and grabbed one of their wrists. Both of the nurses startled and Peter gasped.

“Help her!” His voice was wrecked with disuse.

He sank back into his mind once more, but the nurses took him outside for air and sunshine, whispering words of pity to one another the whole time.

Peter watched her die, over and over, sifting through his mind for a detail that could give some answer. He tried to remember the day before, what people had been around the house. Each time Peter thought he was getting close, he saw her face again. Then he would feel the heat on his face and become lost to the torments of the basement once more. The wolf had retreated completely, unable to fight his mind’s course and preferring death over life without his pack.

During times he wasn’t seeking some hidden answer, Peter sought his wolf. He pleaded to it, begging it to help him move and live again. He howled inside, aching for its return call, but it never answered him. At times, he didn’t know which was worse, losing touch with his wolf or losing his mind to the basement.

Eight long, tiring years passed with him fighting his own mind and body before he found one of the details he’d been searching for. It was actually a lack of something that drew his attention. Two faces were missing from the enferno. Derek and Laura, his nephew and niece, had not been amongst the dead. Eight years now he’d been sitting in this hospital and passed over these missing faces. The wolf howled. Peter lurched from the wheelchair and stumbled to the floor. The nurses had done their best to work out his body while his mind was vacated, but his muscles were weak and hadn’t held up his bodyweight in years now.

Sprawled on the floor with a newfound hope in his chest that he had pack still alive, Peter cried for the first time over everything that had happened. The wolf clawed its way back to the surface and Peter felt a flood of power. His body twisted painfully, bones snapped and shifted inside of him. The wolf engulfed his mind and turned him towards the drive to hunt, to howl, and to bring his pack back to him.

Miraculously, the wolf sneaked through the end wing of the hospital and exited from a side door. The cover of night cloaked him as he darted into the woods. The wolf fought to keep control and Peter’s human mind was buzzing worriedly in the background, not understanding where they were going. Peter, in a hulking humanoid wolf form, skittered to a stop in front of the burned out Hale House. The wolf whined and nosed his way around the property. He climbed up the porch and pushed at the door with a clawed, twisted hand. It opened easily and he took a few tentative steps inside. The only scent that remained was a mix of gasoline and charred wood. The familiar scents of baking, Play-Doh in the hands of children, and the natural perfumes of pack had been melted away. Peter inhaled deeply though he knew the smell would be gone, since not even a trace of the pack scent was left. He would never have imagined that evidence of his pack could be erased so completely. . He growled and walked back out, running for the woods again. He’d seen hunters the night of the fire, of that he was certain, and years ago if you were looking for hunters in Beacon Hills, you sought the Argents.

Peter ran his way to their home and hunkered in the shadows across the street. There was an uneasy feeling in his chest but he knew that was from the Mountain Ash they’d built the shared home with. It was deserted and quiet now. Hunters were in and out of it over the years, almost always from the Argent family. The last residents that Peter knew of had been Gerard and Kate Argent. They’d lived there when Derek and Laura were still in high school and were still there when the fire occurred.

He bounded over to the house, sniffing for confirmation. It was faint, faded with time, but it remained locked inside. There hadn’t been a fire here to overpower the smell. Peter snarled. The perfume that invaded his senses now dragged him back down into memories. Flashes of people running out of the front door, dressed in black or army green - a drift of long blonde hair - a toothy smile - that sweet fruity perfume. Kate. Argent.

Peter fell to the ground as he shifted again, human body shaking and naked. He sucked in deep breath after breath but none of it seemed to reach his lungs. His head was spinning as he tried to get himself upright, and he collapsed back down again. He wasn’t sure how long he had stayed in the panic, but he knew he needed to get back before they found him missing. He had planning to do.

 

Bringing hunters to a town was simple enough. Make a few crazed kills, carve some archaic runes on them, and hunters would come running. Of course, Peter made sure he targeted animals, things he’d hunt naturally, not humans. He was so careful, planning each footstep and swipe of claw, but the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.

Peter had thought he’d been in complete control of himself and this newly emerged aspect of his wolf. That’s what he’d thought until he found his claws dripping blood and eyes strained with tears.

“Oh gods, Laura…”

Peter lived the next few weeks moving between being locked in his body again, controlling his actions, and the wolf taking over. At some point he’s not actually able to pinpoint, he crawled from the wolf’s claws and buried part of Laura’s body beneath a spiral of wolfsbane, hiding her form.

Daytime was the worst for Peter. Stuck in the hospital, often replaying the deaths over and over in his mind, he had nowhere to run. The wolf seemed to understand it could function best under the cover of night and left him his faculties during the day. It was when he had the most control and, at the same time, the least. His body was locked motionless in its battle. Then, Derek is suddenly in front of him, angry. He’s got his hands on Peter’s body, but it’s late and Peter is stuck fighting down memories and fighting off the hold of the wolf. Derek is begging him, begging for his help, for Peter to show a sign of life.

Peter fights, struggles beyond the haze of his mind. Just blink, one blink. Just move your hand and reach out to him. Derek is pack; Derek can help. Derek already has his back to him, being rushed out by a nurse, when Peter’s hand twitches. He lifts a finger and screams inside his mind for Derek to turn around. But Derek doesn’t and Peter wishes he could cry. In the end, he gives his mind away to the wolf. He lets his human side die with the rest of his pack, asleep deep behind the wolf-mind.

He has nothing left and is tired of fighting. Letting go is easier.

 

 


End file.
